Alright, I can safely say I am feeling a lot more positive about the Blue Jays after yesterday's performance against the Mariners. Though I'll note that I was absolutely livid after the game on Saturday and Friday. Now Saturday's game wasn't just bad because the offence couldn't put anything together, it was bad because the pitching was bad and the hitting was bad among other things. Now lets break down the weekend Seattle series and the signs we've seen.
Friday's game:
If you should have noticed anything about Friday's game it's that being down in Triple A is working for reforming Ricky Romero, now I'm not saying he's back to his fantastic 2011 form but he's showing glimpses of the ace-like Romero we saw before. So I think he needs a bit more time down there to tie off any loose ends and get him to 100%, though that is when Johnson gets back since Romero will more than likely get a moral boost being able to play with everyone again for a period of time. In addition the defence was quite a bit better, we've been riddled with errors lately and as a die hard Jays fan it's been driving me crazy so this is nice to see. Though our offence was again pretty abysmal though I can say that it is nice that we weren't completely shut out by King Felix, which is what I was sort of expecting.
Saturday's game:
Now this one was hard to watch, I think an writer for the Toronto Star put it best that "the Jays looked lost"and thats just what I felt like as well. The offence slumped like crazy as per usual and this is just my opinion but I think the slumping offence has just been causing a snowball effect. The offence can't produce so the starters put more pressure on themselves to be perfect and end up working themselves into a hole, guess we won't see if I'm right until the offence produces like Sunday on a consistent basis. Now R.A. Dickey pitched pretty well, with the exception of that nasty 4th inning, either way we have to take this with a grain of salt. One thing I feel a lot of people seem to neglect when they talk about pitchers or hitters performances during a game is where the player is at mentally now this, after reading his book, can be said in spades about Dickey, the man has been through a lot of ups and downs in his life and having Jays fans boo him on several occasions, when THEY think he hasn't done enough, I'm sure is gonna hit him somewhere. So I guess my point here is the overactive fans aren't really helping a lot by booing their team, and I've never understood why fans boo their own team.
Sunday's game:
Now going into Sunday I was in a state where I thought 'well looks like we're back to the same old barely under .500 Blue Jays'. There were some really good things that I saw and heard, specifically from the broadcasters, and there was somethings that were a tad worrying as well. The good things are that first off, WE WERE HITTING! Getting a 15 hit game was a god send and then about half way through the game Jack Morris started talking about how he saw guys like Bautista and Encarnacion not just working on driving the ball out of the park in batting practice but just putting it in play. Now hearing that got me really happy, I mean you know what team is employing that very same strategy? THE RED SOX. Take a look at the Red Sox lineup, it's full of guys who have high avg, good amount of multi-base hits, some speed (with the exception of Napoli (not much), Pedroia (quite a bit) and Ellsbury (ALOT)) and a couple power guys (but no power hitters worth writing home about). But they keep winning games at an alarming rate, why? Thats because they've got their pitchers silencing the opposing offence and their hitters are constantly putting the ball in play, not always over the fence but their constantly getting on base. Ok so that was the first of the good omens the next was that the defence seemed a lot tighter and hopefully Gibbons has realized Bonifacio has never been that good an infield defence, now just cross your fingers that Izturis doesn't fall to pieces again, though personally I'd love to see Kawasaki move to 2nd when Reyes comes back and thats because he's got better defence that Izturis and despite not getting runs left right and centre he knows how to work a count and get 8+ pitches out of a starter each at bat, which is very valuable. Now the only negative thing I saw in the says during that game was Morrow's control over his pitches in the middle few innings (4-6), it was flying all over the place and 5 walks is not something you want as a started for any team, though I was interested when I heard that J.P Arencibia may have been doing a mediocre job of marking (giving Morrow a reference pt of where he wants to throw the ball) and not taking into account how much Morrow's slider and other pitches were moving (about half a foot most of the time).
Either way despite the control issues he righted that ship and struck out a couple more, so overall we can take this as a positive we must remember in the immortal words of fantasy analyst Matthew Berry "They did what a good team is supposed to do, dominate a bad team". So like I say oh so often take this victory as it is, it's not something to go crazy and think the Jays are back in prime form, its also not something to just ignore and think it's far to late to fix the season. Fans should look at this as a step in the right direction, the fact that batters are making changes to their routine during batting practice is a good start and I'm sure with more runs per game pressure will ease up on our starters and the bullpen.
-Eric
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